Some photo-essays on subjects which caught my attention while shambling around the world.
If you wanted to use any photographs for your own or commercial purposes, by all means, go ahead, but please just ask me first, I have never said no before :)

Sunday, April 10, 2011

Photo Essay: An interesting Monument in Brighton

Queen Victoria and her consort, Prince Albert ruled for a long time in the UK and besides straddling the globe with some major historical changes, also left behind a whole clutch of buildings in the UK. Pretty much all the monuments to them are quite interesting, all kudos's to their sponsors, architects and builders. Quite a lot of them were constructed around Queen Victoria’s Golden Jubilee time in the 1887’s or thereabouts.

While on a day trip to Brighton, I came across this rather interesting monument with some very interesting and unique features. This was all made by a local private businessman who wanted to celebrate the Jubilee.

Here’s the tower in question. Quite a Baroque structure, eh? Almost 100 feet in height, it is made up of various architectural styles and has different kinds of stonework sprinkled around it.

The monument has Queen Victoria, Prince Albert, her son and his wife as round medallions on the centre surrounded with female figures. I couldn't understand what these represented nor could I research and find out anything about them, but looks like they were just for show, vaguely classical Greek statues.

The clock itself, there are four faces. The date is 1887 on the clock face.

Moving further up, you see some rather dispirited children (cant see any wings, so cant be cherubs) sitting between large wreaths and then its topped with a dome like structure with gilding on it.

This time ball is another extraordinary structure. This is made up of copper and this moved up and down the 16 foot mast every hour, based upon electrical signals transmitted from the Royal Observatory in Greenwich. Imagine constructing the equivalent of an atomic clock back in the 1887 time? Fascinating, these Victorian engineers and inventors. Unfortunately, this seems to have been very noisy and the local inhabitants complained vociferously about the noise. So it was turned off after few years. For those who might know and see the New Year Celebration in NY, the NY Times Square time ball there which counts down the dying seconds of the new year is based upon the same principle.

Then you have two rather unique directional directional pointers. You see two ships with interesting bow spits, but each of them point to a different direction. The top one says, “To Kemp Town” and bottom one says, “To Station”. Never seen anything like this before, but there you go. The close-up allows us to see the anti pigeon spikes and nets on the clock tower.

Here is another view of the clock tower. Its fascinating. I was standing in front of this monument, about 120 years after it was constructed. Sponsored by private money. Accused of being an over engineered salt cellar. Confused architecture. But with great scientific inputs in terms of the time ball. It has stood there in the centre of this town for so many decades and has looked down on so many things that have happened to this little city and millions of its inhabitants. And it has regularly clicked on in its clock. Oh! and the weather vane has shown the direction of the wind for so many decades. Did the original people who first saw this clock tower imagine that 120 years later, a gawking idiot with a camera will be standing and thinking about them? I tried to imagine my descendants in 120 years doing this and failed. Truly time is strange and plays tricks on our perception. Anyway, there you go, the Jubilee Clock Tower in Brighton.